Workers’ combat and union maneuvers in Venezuela

The
agitation and combativity that appeared during the negotiation of the
last pay agreement in the textile industry have not disappeared. A
general assembly, called by the textile union (SUTISS), ended by
naming a ‘conflict committee’ at the regional level, with the aim
of organizing a workers’ counter attack. That this committee was
dominated by unionists of the PAD1
does not at all diminish the importance of the fact that a need was
felt, however confusedly, for a combat organization distinct from the
union apparatus. This is similar to the engineers’ demand for the
presence at the negotiating table of a delegate elected by the
general assembly. The ‘conflict committee’ put forward the idea
of a regional strike for 17 October 1979. The union Federation was
reticent at first, but finally gave way to the committee (even
lending it their premises), and after a bit of diplomacy to try to
get the CTV’s2
consent, a strike call was finally put out for Wednesday, 17 October.
The CTV then began to talk about a national strike for 25 October.
What was about to happen in Aragua was seen as a test which would
determine the course of events to come.

The
dawn of 17 October found Maracay (capital of the state of Aragua)
paralyzed; in several out­lying districts, all kinds of obstacles
dumped in the streets interrupted the traffic. The workers arrived at
their factories, and then made their way towards the Plaza Girardot
in the town centre. The unions had distributed the strike call, but
they intentionally remained silent about the time and place for the
assembly. The union lead­ership wanted the strike to be a
numerical success, but they were just as concerned that it should
remain
under their control. This explains why they put out the strike call,
and why they kept a monopoly of information about the action that was
planned. Nonetheless, the workers didn’t want to lose this
opportunity to demonstrate their discontent, and accepted these
conditions in their desire to unite in the street with their class
brothers.

At
10am the Plaza was full of people. The vast majority was workers; a
whole host of hastily-made banners were visible, indicating the
presence of particular factories, demanding wage rises, or simply
affirming a class viewpoint (for example, “they have the power
because they want it”).

Then
began the never-ending speeches, whose main lines were: the rise in
prices, the need for wages to be adjusted, the government’s bad
admini­stration, the struggle against the Chambers of Commerce
and Industry, and the preparation for the national strike.

In
the crowd, you could feel that the workers interpreted the strike as
well as the assembly as the beginning of a confrontation with the
bour­geoisie and its state. Clearly, the mass of workers weren’t
satisfied with listening passively, but wanted to express themselves
as a collective body, which they could only do by marching through
the streets. The pressure on the union leaders was so strong that
they ended up by call­ing for a march down the Avenue Bolivar as
far as the provincial Parliament, despite the fact that they had only
planned on an assembly.

Beforehand,
groups of young workers had patrolled the streets of the city centre,
closing down all the shops (except the chemists’), with an attitude
of
determination to enforce the strike, but with­out any attempt at
personal violence or individual aggression. In the same way, they
intercepted buses and taxis, made the passengers get out and left the
vehicles to go on their way without the slightest hindrance.

The
demonstration gets out of control

The
working class practically took possession of the streets of the city
centre, it blocked the traffic, shut the shops, let its anger burst
out, imposed its power. From this moment, events took on their own
dynamic. The 10-15,000 demon­strators (the press talked of 30,000
probably because of the great fright the day gave them, for example,
E Mendoza’s heart attack4,
began to take up improvised slogans, especially insist­ing on
ones that expressed their class feelings (“the discontented
worker demands his rights”, “in shoes or sandals, the
working class commands respect” were a couple of them). It was
imposs­ible to go back to the whining tones of the CTV’s
explicit support for the wages law. The only fig­ure put forward
was for a 50% rise, but in general the demonstrators didn’t
formulate precise ‘demands’; they expressed their rage and their
will to struggle. There were frequent comments about the total
uselessness of this famous law, about the beginning of the war of
“poor against rich”. Near the Palace of Parliament there
sud­denly appeared a small detachment of the ‘forces of order’.
Those at the front of the demonstra­tion hurled themselves
against it, and the police were obliged to run for shelter in the
Palace, where they felt more protected. Immediately, the crowd
concentrated before the entrance, which was obviously locked. The
demonstration had not been prepared for this, and decided not to try
to force an entry, but it fully felt the difference between ‘the
people’ in the street and their ‘representatives’ barricaded in
the Palace. Pre­dictably, the union bureaucracy made every effort
to pacify the demonstrators and to divert atten­tion by calling
for a return to the Plaza Girardot to close the day. After some
hesitations, the cortege started off again, but instead of going
straight to the Plaza Girardot, it preferred to make a tour of the
‘Legislative Palace’. Thus the workers marked out the places they
would have to occupy tomorrow. One after another, spontaneous orators
spoke standing on car rooves and the demonstrators savored the taste
of being masters of the street, in contrast to the aggrava­tions
and impotence that they are daily subjected to.

At
the Plaza Girardot, a new series of union speeches greeted them, with
the aim of putting a stop to ‘all that’. But part of the
demonstration, once it arrived at the Plaza, carried on to the Labor
Inspectorate building. It was, of course, shut. So they returned to
the square. There, thousands of workers, already tired, were sitting
in the street on the pavement. They don’t have any clear idea of
what to do, but no-one seems to feel like going home to the
intolerable, monoto­nous round of daily life. The leaders had
already left, and the union militants were rolling up their banners.
Apparently, this is the end.

But
it goes on …

Suddenly,
at midday, a small demonstration of textile workers appeared. Things
got lively again, and a wild march began all through the town, and
this time without the union leadership.

First
of all, it decided to march together onto the Municipality, where,
after filling the staircases on all four floors, the workers demanded
a confrontation with the Municipal councilors. These latter didn’t
seem to appreciate the insis­tence of an elderly worker knocking
on the door with his stick. Then someone put forward the idea of
marching on the premises of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
where, strangely, nothing was to be found apart from a few cases of
mineral water, which were swiftly used to calm the collective thirst.
From there, the workers decided to go to the transport terminus. On
the way they closed down a construction site and looked up the
foreman in order to give him a bit of ‘advice’. With an elevated
social and demo­cratic sentiment, they divided up the contents of
a poultry shop which had had the unfortunate idea of staying open.

It
was after 2 O'clock in the afternoon, and the demonstration had
travelled some ten kilometers. Hunger, heat and fatigue had
considerably reduced the number of demonstrators. It was time to put
an end to the collective intoxication and bring them back to sad
reality. Given that the union leadership had failed, this task fell
to other organisms. With truncheon blows and other ‘persuasive’
methods5,
the ‘forces of order’ showed for the nth time that the streets
don’t yet belong to the people, out to the police. At 3 O'clock in
the afternoon, order reigned in Maracay.

The
day had been extremely rich in lessons. Instinctively, the working
class had identified several nerve centers of power; parliament, the
Municipal Council, the Ministry of Labor, the unions and the
passenger terminus, this latter as a springboard for extending the
struggle outside Maracay. It was like a kind of reconnaissance
mission for future struggles. Apparently, there were demonstrations
during the night in some districts. It was a proletarian holiday.

CTV:
Oil on troubled waters

If
any worker might have entertained some illu­sions about this
being a first step in a series of triumphant struggles, apparently
thanks to the support of the union apparatus, the next day’s papers
took care to remind them of their condi­tion as an exploited and
manipulated class. In fact, the CTV, as if by magic, transformed the
national strike into a general mobilization ... for 4 O'clock in the
afternoon of 25 October. Clearly, the CTV didn’t want to be
overtaken again by the spontaneous initiative of the masses, and this
time on a national scale. Let the workers work all day first, and
then go and demonstrate, if they still feel like it! The night would
calm down any hot-heads. For the unions, it was now a matter of
trying to arrange an impressive demonstration, but without a
strike, a formula which would allow them to maintain social control
without losing an appearance of militancy. More­over, some
industries in Aragua, profiting from the strike of 17 October’s
juridical illegality, carried out massive lay-offs (especially in La
Victoria, an industrial town in Aragua, where some 500 workers were
made redundant). In this way, they put into practice already planned
pro­jects of ‘reduction of personnel’, ‘industrial
mobility’, and ‘administrative improvement’. The object was to
confront as cheaply as possible the particularly critical financial
situation of the small and medium-sized businesses. This maneuver
created a very tense situation in La Victoria, with marches and
protests opening up a perspective for new struggles in the weeks to
come, but this time without the fake support of the CTV. Either the
workers of La Victoria will learn to struggle for themselves, or they
will be forced to accept the conditions of the dictatorship of
capital.

In
spite of everything, anger explodes

Despite
the characteristics we have described above, the day of ‘national
mobilization’ on 25 October gave rise to new demonstrations of the
workers’ combativity. In the state of Carabobo, and in Guyana6,
there were region-wide strikes with massive and enthusiastic marches.
In the capital, Caracas, where union prestige demanded that the
demonstration should be well attended, the CTV even took it on itself
to bring in coach-loads of workers, who for their part took
advan­tage of their first opportunity in years to express their
class hatred. Aware, after the events of the 17th, of the danger of a
working class outburst, the government could not allow the
demonstration to invade the centre of the capital, as had happened at
Maracay. Furthermore, the ‘forces of order’ had themselves
decided to confront the workers practically from the outset. This
wasn’t an ‘excess’ or a ‘mistake’; the police were just
valiantly carrying out their class function. The confrontation took
place. Instead of running in panic as usual, the demon­strators
put up a stubborn resistance for several hours; they destroyed
symbols of bourgeois luxury in the neighborhood, and a climate of
violence persisted for several days in the working class districts,
especially in “23 de Janero” (a working class district with a
very concentrated and combative working class), leaving a
balance-sheet of several dead.

Meanwhile,
in Maracay, the mass of workers who had already tasted the events of
the 17th were not won over to participation in what seemed to
everybody to be a watered-down repeat perform­ance. Very few
workers bothered to turn up to the meeting. By contrast, the false
rumor that a student had been assassinated in Valencia7
(in fact there really had been a death in Valencia: a worker) brought
some 2,000 students into the streets. It’s typical of students to
be shocked by the murder of one student by the police, and to remain
blind to the less spectacular daily destruction of the working class
in the factories: 250 fatal accidents and more than a million
industrial injuries and diseases a year reveal capitalism’s
violence to the full.

It
was a student demonstration;the working class character of
the 17th had disappeared, the whole affair was drowned in a sea of
university, youth and other slogans. Despite this, it was worth
noting the absence of the traditional student organizations, and the
participation of many ‘independent’ students, who could in the
future converge with the emerging workers’ movement. Only a group
of teachers -- they were on strike -- maintained a certain class
character.

The
working class had shown its readiness to express its extreme
discontent as soon as the opportunity arose, but it was not, and is
not yet, prepared to try to create this possibility autonomously
through its own initiative.

From
the street to Parliament

Without
losing any time, the CTV at once conclu­ded that such an
opportunity should at all costs be prevented from arising. In fact,
for the moment a relative calm is being imposed -- a situation that
could well be overturned when the year’s end bonuses come up, given
the financial diffi­culties of some companies. There is less and
less talk of mobilizations, and more of parlia­mentary
negotiations, which are supposed to put through the famous law
proposed by the CTV; but this time, there’s no question of applying
pres­sure at street level. On 29 October, the CTV’s
consultative council concretized the results of negotiations between
social democrats and Christian democrats, and decided that from now
on the centre should be informed beforehand when­ever a strike
movement is decided by the local or craft federations. This was to
keep control of any dangerous situation. And once this point was
granted, all strikes in the ministries were declared illegal. If the
centre behaves like this towards its own federations, you can imagine
its attitude when confronted with a workers’ movement acting
independently of the unions.

All
this throws a clear light on the alternative which supposedly
characterizes the unions: of being complaints bureaus or instruments
of struggle. In reality, the unions are complaints bureaus in periods
of social calm and organs of sabotage of the workers’
struggle as soon as it raises its head.

The
old mole shows its nose and the leaders contemplate the heavens

The
present situation is one of resurgence of the proletariat on the
national scene. This is simi­lar to what happened at the
beginning of the sixties and during 1969-72. This resurgence is the
product of the end of the oil boom, and of the national bourgeoisie’s
delusions of grandeur. Today the bill has to be paid, which in plain
language means rationalization of production, bringing bankruptcy in
its wake for small and medium-sized companies (the maintenance of
whose profits is one of the main preoccupations of our ‘socialists’
-- ah how beautiful capitalism was before there were any
monopolies!), and intensi­fied exploitation of the working class.

The
liberation of prices is only one weapon of the policy of
restructuring the country’s produc­tive apparatus -- a policy
which must be carried out along the only lines left to the
capitalists: crisis and recession. Contrary to the assertions of the
university professors, this policy is not mistaken -- it is
inevitable within the framework of the capitalist system. To struggle
against this policy without attacking the very foundations of the
capitalist system (like those who demand the resignation of the
economics cabinet for being supposedly ‘misinformed’ or ‘too
ignorant’) is to show a socio-political shortsightedness which
comes down to rejecting revolutionary struggle.

What
must be put forward in the face of the problems that the development
of capitalism imposes on the masses, is the imperative need to go
beyond, relations of production determined by money and the market,
to the takeover of produc­tion and distribution by the freely
associated producers.

The
bourgeoisie tries to divert the masses’ attention by orienting it
towards a wages law, which is reduced to its bare bones thanks to the
unions’ own fear of mobilizing the masses. In fact, this law hardly
aims to compensate for infla­tion at the rate measured and
recognized by the Venezuelan Central Bank since prices were
liberated. Those who claim to be more ‘radical’ do so by
demanding a higher percentage or even the nec plus ultra of a
sliding scale of wages (which at best comes down to definitively
tying the workers’ income to the oscillations of the bourgeois
economy). While we’re on the subject, it’s inter­esting to
note that the Brazilian workers have just opposed a similar law,
because they say it would diminish their ability to struggle at
fac­tory level to win rises much higher than inflation, as did
indeed happen at the beginning of the year.

The
problem isn’t the percentage of the wage rises. What’s needed is
to push forward all those struggles which tend to show up the
autonomy of workers’ interests against those of bourgeois
society, those struggles which tend to generalize, unifying and
extending themselves beyond narrow craft limitations to all sectors
in struggle, all those which tend to attack the very existence of
wage labor. It’s not so much the particular reasons behind each
struggle which matter but the organizational experience gained during
them. It’s possible, moreover, to distin­guish a watershed in
the proletariat’s activity when we consider that since 1976, the
number of strikes has not stopped growing, while the same has not
been true for the deposition of the ‘claim casebooks’ demanded by
law. This seems to indicate that the working class feels itself less
and less concerned with bourgeois legality, that its action tends
more and more to be a direct function of its interests.

Confronted
with the liberation of prices, the workers will have to impose a
liberation of wages; just as they will have to tear into shreds the
schedules laid down in wage agreements. They will have to prepare
themselves for a daily and permanent
struggle in their workplaces and in the street.

The
workers in Venezuela are not alone

What’s
happening in Venezuela is not unique in the world; on the contrary,
we are simply taking part in a phenomenon of universal dimensions.
Nowhere has capitalism succeeded, and nowhere will it succeed, in
satisfying humanity’s needs in a stable way. Unemployment in Europe
and China, inflation in the USA and in Poland, nuclear inse­curity
and insecurity in the food supply, with the social struggles they
engender, are the witnesses.

The
battle-cry of the Ist International is still on the order of the day:

“The
emancipation of the working class will be the work of the workers
themselves.”

Venezuela,

November,
1979

1
PAD: Partido Accion Democratica (social democrat). Went into
opposition at the last presidential elections which brought the
Social Christians in power.